When Heroes Fall
by Firecadet
Summary: Han Solo and Leia have been killed by a ghost from the Galaxy's past: The Sith Empire. Beaten in the second great galactic war in BBY 3650, the sith return to assault a galaxy still reeling from the lost tribe's attack, and the Rise of Abeloth. Only two Jedi stand in the way of this destruction: Luke Skywalker and his son, Ben. Some Ben/Ves and Tahiri/OC. Set after Apocalypse.
1. Chapter 1

Somewhere on the Hydian Way, 44.6 ABY

The _Falcon_ lurched as it dropped out of hyperspace. This was not altogether unusual, given both the ship's age and the number of 'aftermarket' components it was fitted with. What was more unusual was the wedge shaped ship visible out of the cockpit.

"An Interdictor cruiser." Han commented, glancing at his wife. "What the hell is it doing switched on halfway down the Hydian Way? Must be some weird training exercise."

"Han, it's not imperial."

"Then who... who the hell has a karking interdictor, and would set it up here?"

"I... don't know. The crew feel like imperials, but... I think some are dark-siders."

"How do you... never mind. Strap in."

With that, he he pushed forward the throttles for the main engines, before throwing the _Falcon_ through a series of high-speed, extremely impressive acrobatic manoeuvres that an un-informed observer wouldn't have belived possible from a YT-1300 freighter, manovering the light freighter like it was putting on a show at an aerobatic display.

The crew of the interdictor responded by launching the vessel's starfighter complement, consisting of a several dozen strong force of odd looking starfighters, and opening up with the interdictor's turbolasers. Leia could feel the hatred of both the opposing pilots and gunners for their targets, and knew that this would be bad.

When he saw the fighters, which Leia inserted into his HUD in order for him to be able to identify them. "Nothing I've seen or heard of before." He muttered, before continuing louder "An ETA-2, one of the interceptors the Jedi used in the clone wars, would be my guess, but honestly, it could be anything."

Reaching for the two touchballs used to aim the falcon's cannons; Leia waited for the first starfighter to come into range, and then opened fire with with the quad cannons. Han, in his element, was throwing the _Falcon_ around like it was a X-Wing, performing barrel rolls, wingovers and the other assorted manoeuvres he had learnt over a lifetime of evading everyone from imperial customs and bounty hunters to other smugglers. Leia was using the force to guide her cannon bolts onto target, with her targets countering her.

"Han, I love you."

"I know." He responded in their ancient ritual. And we are getting out of this, aren't we?"

"I think so." she replied, as the Sith flyers finally found their target, sending cannon bolts hammering into the rear shield, and igniting the first warning lamps on the _Falcon'_s system boards.

Pivoting the quad cannons, she returned fire, catching one Sith filter with a dozen bolts, vaporising both the fighter and its pilot, and clipping his wingman's craft, sending a secobd fighter spinning off with one engine and a cannon hole through the top of the cockpit. The pilot was still alive, but he was not going to be able to return to action without a new fighter, assuming he could regain control before the craft ran out of atmosphere to vent.

Despite all of Han's flying skills, and Leia's force-enhanced gunnery, inevitably, the falcon's shields failed, and the pings and thuds of laser cannon bolts connecting with the falcon's hull began to resonate through the ancient light freighter, and so, with the quad cannons still thundering defiance, Han verbally activated the cockpit holo-recorder, and made what he knew would almost certainly be his last recording, addressed to Luke Skywalker.

"Kid," he said. "I've had a good run of the cards, but it looks like I'm about to play my final hand. We've been pulled out of hyperspace by a Sith interdictor, according to Leia, and are under heavy attack. We've come a long way together, since Yavin, but you're going to have to travel the rest of your path without me or Leia. She sends her love and her best wishes for Ben. Han Solo, out."

As he pressed the send button, mounted on the console, the end came.

A well-placed volley from a turbolaser hammered into the falcon, destroying the engines, then the cannons, before driving a seam of bolts up through the hull to the cockpit, superheating the atmosphere inside the craft, killing both Han and Leia before they knew they were hit. C-3PO, who was also on board, was hit directly, and vaporised. Then the Falcon snapped into two halves, along the line of strikes, and went spiralling on through space, carrying nearly all of its momentum and cargo into the void, without decelerating.

In his office on Ossus, Luke Skywalker felt a split second of burning heat engulf his body, and abruptly knew what had happened.

"Han." he croaked out, feeling the depth of the loss. "Leia. No…"

As he sat there, feeling completely alone, his datapad chimed with the new mail tone.

Feeling the weight of the loss, Luke slowly opened the file, and saw Han's face, and the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, and sagged further in his seat. Finally, he selected the play command, and watched Han's final message, which was punctuated by both the sound of laser fire driving into the unprotected hull of the falcon, and the steady sound of the falcon's cannons firing back.

"Kid, I've had a good run of the cards…" Han began, with green strobes from near misses periodically flashing throughout the message. As he watched the message, Luke began to feel his emotions boiling over, and simply began to sob, silently, but uncontrollably, as the reality of the situation hit brutally home.

~0~

Varykino, Naboo

From the kitchen, Jagged Fel heard his wife scream once. Then he heard the unmistakable sound, for a career soldier, of a body hitting the ground. Without thinking, he vaulted the counter at which he was preparing a tray of cocktails and a fruit salad, and grabbed at his right hip, before remembering that he was wearing swim shorts and nothing else. Grimacing, he reached up onto the counter for the discarded and large knife he had been using to fillet a pineapple, before moving towards the doorway, using all available cover, and planning whose blaster to use on whom.

After about a minute, which he had spent reviewing his long-ago chiss academy close quarters training, a shadow heralded the approach of a being to the kitchen doorway. Drawing back his knife, he finally remembered where he was supposed to drive it for a combination of a quick takedown and a silent kill.

As soon as the human female came through the doorway, he lunged, before redirecting the blow when he recognised the target as his bodyguard, Tahiri Veila, who had not drawn or ignited her lightsaber.

"Jag," she said, as soon as he'd regained his balance. "Do you know what happened to Jaina?"

"I heard her scream, once. Then I heard her fall, and thought it was an assassination attempt against both of us."

"She was in the hall, coming down the stairs, and then suddenly she screamed and collapsed. I caught her before she hit her head, and then I felt a reverberation, like an echo, coming to me through the force, of heat and death. That's when I came to find you."

"Sorry for the knife attack." Jag called over his shoulder, as he sprinted towards the grand staircase, where he could see his bikini-clad wife laid out in the recovery position on the half landing.

By the time Tahiri caught up with him, he was shaking her, repeating "Jaina, Jaina." as Tahiri arrived with the villa's medpack.

Quickly, she applied the ECG leads to Jaina's chest, before grabbing a stim-shot from the front of the kit, and injecting it into Jaina's left bicep. The screen showed a considerably elevated heart-rate, compared to her resting norm, lower than usual blood pressure and a blood oxygen saturation level of around 99%.

Shortly after the injection, Jaina began to stir, and Jag noticed that her eyes immediately filled with tears, and she began to sob. Gradually, through her tears, jag began to make out a phrase she was repeating over and over again. "Mom, dad. No. you can't be dead. Not now."

When she finally regained full consciousness, she looked up to see Jag kneeling beside her, and threw her arms around him, before pulling him close, and burying her head in his shoulder.

"Mom, Dad. They're gone." She sobbed, her head pressed hard against his body.

"Easy, Jaina, easy. Jag murmured into her ear.

"This is the worst possible time to lose them that I could have possibly imagined."

"Why?"

"I'm pregnant."

~0~

Malcoon Spaceport, Taris

In a small spaceport lounge, an casual observer would have been well within their rights to suspect that the young, red-headed pilot who had suddenly staggered against a wall happened to be drunk. Wearing an olive jumpsuit, he looked somewhat too young to legally purchase alcohol, or even to be shaving. A less casual glance might have noticed the tube hanging from the pilot's belt, and caused the observer to wander if the boy was a Jedi, and if so, where his master happened to be, and how he had allowed his apprentice to get drunk.

For Ben Skywalker, such concerns were only in the back of his mind, and the cause of his near fall had had nothing to do with ingestion of an inappropriate amount of Tarisian ale, and everything to do with a wave of heat and pain radiating through the Force, with multiple sources, and two seeming to be echoes of the first, with lower intensity and duration than the initial pulse.

Ben instantly registered the initial source, and the realisation nearly caused his knees to buckle.

"Aunt Leia. Uncle Han." He whispered to himself, then began a sprint towards the port where he had left his starfighter, hoping it was fuelled for a jump of nearly seven thousand parsecs, which would take him nearly three hours. He hoped his father could cope until he arrived. He also hoped he was cope. And that Jaina wasn't going to go through the floor again, like she had when she'd put down her own twin.

* * *

I Calcuated Hyperjump distances and travel times using a ruler, a complete map of the galaxy, and the data that it takes four hours to get from correllia to tatooine, which computed at approx 2700parsec/h.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't just the Skywalker-Solo clan who had felt the deaths through the Force. All of the council members, along with many of the more experienced knights, had felt the shockwave to a greater or lesser extent, and without any call being needed, they had filed into the Conclave chamber, gathering in small groups as they waited for Master Skywalker to make his appearance, and explain the situation.

It was a long time before he arrived.

Finally, the two staff members standing by the doors leading into the hall opened the doors, admitting the grand Master. The man was haggard, and through the Force, all of the assembled Jedi could feel the massive amount of pain in Luke Skywalker's heart.

"My friends, this order has today received one of its most crippling peacetime blows," he announced. "Jedi Knight Leia Organa Solo, along with her husband Han, an honorary but greatly valued member of both our order and the galactic community, have both been murdered. They were travelling to visit their granddaughter, Allana, when they were attacked by the lost tribe of the Sith. From this, I believe we ought to strike back, and destroy their last remnants wherever they hide…

As Luke continued his speech, Corran Horn began to wonder about the state of mind of the man on the stage.

_He blames the lost tribe. Where is his proof? How does he know it wasn't a navigation... _he broke that thought off, remembering the sensation of crashing, fiery death. _O.k. it was murder, but the lost tribe wouldn't be targeting the Falcon unless they believed they would gain. Or it could have been a simple attempt at piracy, by the Sith. But why the Sith? It could have been any old large gang of experienced pirates._

"… I will be travelling to apprehend the former Jedi and Sith Vestara Khai, who was last reported on Tattoine, by a unit of GA Inteligence operatives. Ben will be accompanying me, as his connection to Vestara is likely to allow him to take her alive if it is possible to do so. She has previously attempted the murder of Han Solo, and Allana, by means of a thermal detonator, and so must be the first in the frame for a subsequent successful attempt."

_He is targeting her based on her previous actions during a conflict. That information would certainly support taking her in for questioning, but this smacks more of judicial abduction, as I doubt her possible innocence in the matter would be enough to ensure her release into the galactic community._

"Master Skywalker," Corran asked. "Wouldn't it be better if I accompanied you, as both you and Ben have a potential conflict of interest?"

"That won't be necessary, Corran."

_I'm not so sure. But we'll find out, one way or another._

"Master Skywalker," Cilghal asked, once everyone else had left the room. "Are you sure you are mentally fit for this operation?"

"How do you mean?" he replied, puzzled.

"As in, will you be able to control your emotions while Vestara Khai is in your custody?"

"_I_ am a Jedi master."

"And _I_ am the head of the Order's healers. And based on my knowledge, particularly of human psychology, you are likely to struggle with the long term presence of someone you blame for the death of two of your relatives."

"I am going, with Ben, to capture her."

"At your orders, sir."

"How do you mean?"

"I do not condone this course of action. It is my belief that you should remain in the temple, Master Skywalker. I do not personally believe you to be compos mentis."

Luke, at that point, turned his back and stalked off, his anger evident through both his bearing and his force presence.

From an alcove twenty yards away, Corran had watched the entire exchange, one hand on his lightsaber hilt, and had heard every word that passed between Luke and Cilghal, and witnessed Luke's reaction to the suggestion that he not travel with Ben.

As Cilghal walked towards him, the opposite direction to that in which Luke Skywalker had departed in, he stepped out of the alcove, and fell into step beside the Mon Calamari.

"This is not good," he commented. "Han and Leia are gone, and now Master Skywalker is acting like a child."

"I fear it is worse than that, Corran, much worse."

"What do you mean?"

"You felt his anger just now. If that is his reaction to advice, I shudder to think what would happen if he was crossed, even by his own son."

"Can we detain him?"

"It'd take the entire council, and half the knights to overpower him, physically, and with the force, he is the strongest of us all."

"Drugs?"

"We'd have to put him in a coma to overcome his powers, and one dose wouldn't be enough."

"And if we let him go?"

"Then we take the chance of him falling to the dark side, and we would have to take him down. And if it comes to that, may the Force be with us all."

~0~

In his office, Luke briefly logged into his holoterminal, before forwarding a copy of Han's last message to Jaina, who he knew was taking an extended honeymoon on Naboo, in the hope she could at least recover what was left of her parents and their ship.

Then Ben came sprinting into the room, still in his flight suit, carrying his helmet by the chinstrap, and stopped short as he felt the pain on his father's heart.

As his father looked up, his heart and face bleak, Ben said "I'm sorry dad. I wish I could have done something."

"Everyone wishes that today, Ben. But we also know that only the _Venture _would have been enough to save them."

"Not even your help…?"

"I couldn't have saved them in a starfighter. An interdictor cruiser was nearly impossible to down with a squadron of T-65 X-wings, although they could be driven off."

"I… I just wish."

"So do we all. I need you to go and get your grab bag. We're going to tatooine to apprehend your girlfriend. She may know something."

Ben flushed slightly when Vestara was referred to as his girlfriend, and Luke felt the spike of pain from it, which confirmed that Ben still loved her.

"On what grounds?" Ben asked. The question threw Luke, for a split second, because it sounded just like something Corran Horn would have asked.

"On the grounds of having made a previous attempt at the victims' murder."

"And that makes her more of a suspect than about every imperial moff, TIE pilot and pirate gang in the outer rim?" Ben asked, his cheeks still flushed slightly.

"Your Uncle sent me a message, in which he relays your aunt's impression that they were under Sith attack."

"O.k. and that means Ves was involved?" Ben replied, sounding slightly unsure.

"No it doesn't, but she is the only known Sith we have a heads up on. Face Loran contacted me to say a group of his operatives had come into contact, literally, with her, and had spotted Ship over the Jundland wastes, and the old Kenobi place is reported as inhabited by sandcrawlers. This gives us a target to aim for, as no sensible individual without force powers would occupy an isolated hut fourteen klicks from a major Tusken encampment."

"I guess. Is she going to be considered hostile?"

"Would you rate her as hostile, Ben?"

"Only if she was in close proximity to Ship, and even then, she would probably be more interested in sleeping with me than killing me." Ben replied, flippantly, although Luke could feel a slight edge on his emotions.

"And you?" Luke asked. "How would you react to her?"

"I honestly don't know. I still love her, but I also know that she tried to kill nearly every member of my family at some point during our previous encounter, so I might be slightly angry at her. Whatever else though, I still love her, and I want to properly redeem her."

"I think the pair of us ought to be able to take her down and get some with some force blanking restraints on her wrists, so we can capture and hold her."

"And if she comes quietly?"

The question threw Luke for a second, but he finally managed to reply "then she wears them in front of her, stacked, rather than spending the trip attached to some cargo tie-down rings, naked."

"She has civil rights too, dad." Ben replied, as he left the room, before feeling a slight oppressive and dark edge fading from the force as his proximity to Luke Skywalker increased. "Kriff, dad. What is wrong with you?" he muttered, as he turned into his quarters to collect his flight bag, rather than the grab bag he used for his X-wing.

~0~

When she woke up, the slightly invasive presence of ship was gone, Vestara Khai realised with a start. Tentatively, she sent out a probing thought, and found nothing.

As she got up from the small cot in the corner of an old hut she had moved into, as was the way on Tattoine.

When she had arrived there, drawn by the force signature, the roof had been caved in, and she had spent a full week installing a new roof, using a set of metal beams she had dug out of a dune as rafters for the canvas construction that mostly kept the weather out.

A trip to Fort Tusken had allowed her to acquire a defective vaporator, in exchange for being intimidating to a group of smugglers, apparently led by a gammorean. The result had been a firefight, and she had retreated under fire from a slug-pistol shaped like a T, which had fired shots at her so rapidly that she couldn't anticipate them.

"Kra'fir." She muttered under her breath, as the likely reality of life on tatooine without transport hit home. She knew suddenly that she was going to die in this place, unmourned even by Ben. And that hurt her, because she still loved him.

Despairingly, she drew out the other item she had acquired in Fort Tusken, a portable holocommunicator with sufficient range to hit a repeating station on the Darklighter estate. She had managed to find the private channel for Ben's quarters on Ossus, and had also figured out the reverse charge method that would bill it to the Jedi order. After firing up the device, she fidgeted with the gem on a small wire bracelet Ben had made for her, using the electrical repair kit aboard the _Shadow. _He had found the gem on Korriban, inside a sith tomb, and melded it into the wire like a lightsaber crystal.

After about two minutes, the holocomm bleeped its ready tone, and she entered the channel she wanted to reach, before pressing the call button.

"Ben," she said into the device, after giving it a moment to connect. "This is Vestara Khai, and I want to come back to the order."

As Ben was about to leave his room, an unfamiliar electronic tone startled him, and, after he had rolled through the doorway, and lain there for about ten seconds, he recalled it was the incoming call signal from his holocomm unit, which he had never used. "Ben Skywalker, go ahead."

"… Khai, and I want to come back to the order."

"Ves…?" he asked, recognising her voice instantly. " Why in the name of the dark side are you calling me? To gloat at the news about my aunt and uncle?"

"What. What happened to your aunt and uncle?"

"Some of your Sith buddies ambushed them on their way to visit Allana. They shot them out of space."

"I am so sorry. I had no idea." She stammered, cringing slightly at the anger and pain in Ben's voice.

"Then why are you calling me?"

"Because if you don't come and take me prisoner, I am going to die, slowly and painfully, from dehydration."

"Have you gambled away Ship and marooned yourself somwhere?" Ben asked, smiling slightly.

"He left, because of you."

"How did you plot that course?" he asked, confused at the idea.

"I can't stop loving you. He wanted to make me hate you for not intervening with your cousin, but I couldn't bring myself to." she replied, her tone full of despair. "I don't want to be a Sith anymore."

"If you stay on Tattoine, you can ride all the way to Osuss in our nice, climate controlled brig on the Shadow." Ben told her, his neutral tone seeming to be both loving and hurt, even over the holocomm.

"I can't leave. I'm in the middle of the desert, and I've got about four day's worth of water left."

"We're on our way to you anyway. We need to question you over that little incident involving my aunt and uncle." he told her, amazed at the way she sagged with relief at the news.

"I love you, Ben. Now and always, I love you."

"And please be warned, you will be riding in force-proof stun cuffs."

"Just come and rescure me," she begged. "You are my only hope."

"We're on our way. Don't go anywhere." HE quipped, smiling slightly, before pressing the end call button on his console.

As she put the device down, Vestara relaxed for one moment, before stowing the holocomm carefully into her pack, and taking up a meditation position, as she tried and failed to centre herself, unable to cut through the turmoil if thoughts, about being an a Jedi, and about Ben, and a few tricks she remembered learning in another life.


	3. Chapter 3

**A.N Sorry about the lack of updates, school is very hectic at the moment.**

* * *

As Ben stood in front of the now deactivated holocomm, stunned by the realisation he could have Vestara back, with the pleasure of that knowledge tempered by his anger at her attempt on his cousin, his father entered the room, having followed his son, intending to apologise to him for the slight insult he realised that he had given Ben, by suggesting that Vestara was hostile, no matter what her reaction was to their arrival.

"Ben," Luke asked, confused by the way his son was blankly staring at the holocomm, "what's wrong?"

When Ben turned around, Luke could see tears running down his cheeks.

"It's Ves. She's trapped on Tatooine."

"She's called you?"

"Yep. And when we get to Tatooine, please don't forget that she's _my_ prisoner."

The slight smile accompanying the statement took the very slight sting out of the words.

"Yes, sir." Luke replied, keeping a straight face only with Jedi expression control powers.

"What's your instinct?"

"She's telling the truth. You could see the panic in her entire face."

When Ben replied, Luke saw, for a second, the officer in the Galactic Alliance Guard standing in front of him, not his sixteen year old son, and was shaken by the sight.

"Then we'll go and fetch her. But she rides in the cuffs, because that way, she can't easily kill us, and you can't get her top off."

Ben blushed at the thought of seeing Vestara topless, then replied "I don't want to get her top off."

"Really? I thought that was where things had got to before."

At that point, Ben mentally threw his bag in the direction of Luke Skywalker's head, requiring the Jedi Master to duck rapidly.

"Meet me at the _Shadow_ in half an hour."

"Wilco"

Smiling slightly, the Jedi Grand Master made his way to the hangers, to begin the various pre-flight inspections of the _Shadow_.

~0~

With Jag's solicitous assistance, Jaina had made the short journey to one of the sun loungers on the terrace directly outside from the half landing, and lain down, before beginning to cry, helplessly, at the way her parents had been taken, now of all times.

The fact that neither her child, nor her parents would ever meet sent a vibrodagger into her heart every time she thought about it, and the anger at the news began to grow inside her.

Then her datapad, which had been placed beside her by Jag, before he had withdrawn, along with Tahiri, to a sitting room on the other side of the villa, chimed with the new mail tone.

After a minute of hesitation, she reached over, and opened the message.

It was from Luke.

"Jaina, I have nothing else to say to you other than the fact that I can confirm the death of your mother and father. Ben and I are travelling in pursuit of Vestara Khai, who we believe to be involved. They sent me the attached message just before they were killed. I would like you to go to the attached co-ordinates and retrieve their bodies. With my sincere and shared condolences, Luke Skywalker."

After watching the message, Jaina called downstairs to Jag. "Jag," she yelled. "Get the _Maiden_ fired up."

"Why?" he called back.

"Uncle Luke just sent me the co-ords for where the _Falcon…_ went down." Her voice wavered on the last two words, but she forced herself not to cry.

Hoisting her grab bag with the force, Jaina made her way downstairs, before exiting the villa through the front door, onto the lawn where the _Sword Maiden_ was waiting.

The ship was a Skipray 24t blastboat, which had been modified into a more comfortable starship by placing a partition behind the fighting compartment, enclosing the ship's living quarters and partitioning off the refresher station from the small galley and the bunkrooms, each of which contained two bunks, and had soundproofed walls, for a variety of practical reasons. Living and eating were all done on the flightdeck, which had four seats; for a pilot, who handled the missiles systems as well as flying, a gunner/ navigator, who used a pair of joysticks to fire the turrets, and also operated the navicomputer, and two other seats, one of which could be used to provide a more advanced set of communication options than the small set next to the pilots chair. The final chair was simply designed for a secondary gunner, who could take over one of the turrets to improve combat performance.

The ship also had a rather more unusual modification; a small docking tube, along with brackets for an X-Wing starfighter. The usual craft mounted in the brackets was a XJ7 starfighter Jaina had been given as a wedding present by her former squadron mates in Rogue Squadron. It had then been upgraded somewhat, being fitted with more powerful drives, a ion cannon, mounted in the nose, and was now sporting a set of experimental shield generators, which used capturable energy from near misses to reinforce the shield. The system was only good for glancing hits, and a direct hit would not be more than slightly absorbed by the system.

Tahiri's astromech droid had found itself pressed into the operation of the blastboat's shield and sensor systems, to allow the craft to be flown in battle by Jag and Tahiri, with Jaina freed up to fly cover in her X-wing.

Once all three of the group were aboard, Jag fired up the drives, before sending the _Maiden_ soaring out of the atmosphere of Naboo.

"Where to?" Jag asked his wife, and punched in the numbers as she read them off her datapad. After the navicomputer chimed that the course was plotted, he pushed forward the hyperdrive lever, before watching as the starlines blurred, before being replaced by the blue tunnel of a hyperjump.

~0~

As Luke settled into the pilot's seat on the Jade Shadow, he looked around the cockpit, relaxing as he saw each familiar seat and component, along with the small droid plugged into the datajack Luke had installed specially.

"Artoo, begin plotting the fastest possible course to Tatooine." He instructed the droid. The musical blat he got in reply was to remind him they hadn't left the ground yet. "I know, I know. Just do it." He told the droid, smiling at the bloop the droid threw back at him as he got to work.

Ben was also aboard, and was at the far end of the ship, modifying one of the rear passenger cabins into a cell, by removing the internal controls for the lights and door, while also fitting a Ysalmir cage that was only accessible from the outside of the room, in order to ensure that Vestara was completely confined when they loaded her aboard, rather than relying entirely on the Anti-Force binders created by Master Horn after the Force Psychosis outbreak to allow for quicker and more discriminating confinement of Jedi and Sith, rather than simply relying in the indiscriminate bubble produced by a ysalamiri generated force bubble.

As they were Jedi, rather than Sith or security officers, he made very sure that there were comforts in the room, such as a holoplayer, loaded with a massive collection of films, games and Jedi teaching materials, just in case she got bored while locked in both stuncuffs and the cabin. He also provided a set of proper bedding and some toiletries for her to use while in the small cell.

He had already placed the small bonsai containing the ysalamir they had removed from the order's supply within the case, and so was taken by surprise when the door was abruptly pulled closed, and then locked from the outside.

"Dad!" he yelled. "Open the kriffing door."

"Open it yourself." The Jedi master called back.

"I can't get it open without the force or the keypad. Not if you still want the door."

When his father opened the door, he was laughing. After looking at him for a moment, Ben joined in.

"Sir, I can confirm the cell is secure." Ben deadpanned, after getting himself back under control "All luxuries are installed, including that sani-gel she liked last time."

"You missed a feature." Luke replied, pointing at the door. "Where's the hatch."

Smiling, Ben drew his Lightsaber and cut a small rectangle out of the door, providing the additional feature. "I'll just go and get the brackets."

"Be sure to use a hinge and latch." Luke instructed him, before Artoo took the yacht into hyperspace.

~0~

When the _Sword Maiden_ dropped out of hyperspace, Jaina was alarmed to see a capital ship waiting for them. About five hundred metres long, the ship was shaped like a Venator-class Star Destroyer, but only carried a single, bow mounted, triple turbolaser, along with the single cannons mounted elsewhere on the hull and bow. A flight of strange looking starfighters saw the Blastboat, and quickly came in on an approach vector.

The starfighters had an oval cockpit, with a TIE style forward viewport, and had wing arrays similar to an eta-5 A-wing, with each long wing forming an extension of the fuselage, with two cannons mounted under the cockpit.

"Unidentified Craft, this is Razor flight. Prepare to be boarded, in the name of the Emperor. Any attempt at resistance will result in your craft being destroyed." A metallic voice grated over the comm.

"Razor flight, this is Sword Maiden. We do not recognise your authority to board." Jag replied. "We are not here to attack you or your carrier. We are here on a search and rescue mission."

"I repeat, stand by to be boarded, or we _will_ open fire." The squadron leader stated.

Jag replied by opening the throttle, as Jaina took off for her starfighter.

Before she got there, the starfighters opened fire, rocking the _Maiden_'s shields and sending Jag into a defensive spiral.

Using the force, Jaina opened the docking tube for her starfighter, before vaulting into the cockpit, pulling the canopy closed as she did so.

"Rowdy, power up the ship." she instructed her astromech, as she strapped herself into her harness. "Give me a heads up on what's going on."

As soon as all four fusial engines showed green, she lifted away from the blastboat, before dropping in behind razor flight and opening fire.

The first starfighter hadn't seen her lift, and so didn't take any action as a stream of blue cannon bolts cut a seam right across the hull, slicing the craft in half. His wingman was already breaking up and right when Jaina fired on him, and her volley only succeeded in removing one of the fighters' wing arrays, sending it spinning into a volley from one of the turrets aboard the wildly dancing _Sword Maiden_.

As she fired, Rowdy trilled a warning, and she looked down at her tactical display to see ten more starfighters, along with an assault shuttle, deploying from the capital ship. Grimly, she quickly downed both of her remaining opponents, shooting the top of the fuselage off of one, and blowing the drives out of the other, before coming around sharply and firing three proton torpedoes towards the oncoming fighters.

One of the targeted craft broke high, before dropping into a tight loop which took it behind the torpedo, causing the proximity fuse to detonate with the target outside the blast radius. The other two craft weren't so lucky, taking direct hits and exploding, damaging other members of the flight in the process.

Without pausing, Jaina plunged into the formation like a hawkbat into a flock of caranaks, firing relentlessly. Her first pass downed two more starfighters, before the fighter which had evaded her torpedo dropped in on her tail.

Breaking high, before dropping into a steep dive, she could constantly feel her pursuer cutting off her manoeuvres, and constantly herding her towards a box, marked target.

She knew there was only one way to live. Suddenly cutting her drive, she watched the attacking starfighter shoot past, before she was pounding the rear shields with her cannons. Only two bolts connected, and then she was whirling around as she tried to reacquire the fighter, only to find her attacker seemingly glued to the rear of her starfighter, denying all attempts to shake him, and steadily decreasing her rear shield power, even when she shunted energy to it from the drives.

As she banked round, back towards the hairball, intending to force the other pilot to fire with his own squadron backstopping the shots, she instead saw Jag looping the blastboat in pursuit of the last of the five fighters she had left him. As they both ran back in, Jaina frantically juking and jinking, watched as Tahiri used both turrets to herd the last starfighter into the sights of her starfighter, and she was able to shoot it down, sending a stream of cannon bolts scything into the cockpit of the craft, blowing it out, before being hurled forwards in her seat.

Looking down at her screens, she saw the picture she expected. _Shields out, engines out, lasers out. Kriffing sensors as well._ She read, scanning the damage screen with a wince.

Abruptly, a storm of ion bolts turned local space blue, before an impact on the rear of her starfighter rocked the damaged X-wing further.

"Jaina?" Jag asked. Rather than her helmet comlink, the sound was issuing from her flightsuit, from the pocket where she kept her comlink. _Comms as well then._

Wincing, she pulled out the device, and made the call.

"Jag, I'm going to need the tractor beam to get me out of here, and the one by the docking port to get me in there. Where's the big guy?"

"He jumped when I put a missile through the bridge shields. The squadron leader's floating behind you, full of ion bolts."

"Why?" the different parts of the question struck jag separately.

"Because he flew well. He nearly killed a Jedi. And because Tahiri switched my controls over to ion with the force."

"Ah. Pull me aboard, and we can drag him through the starboard airlock."

"Wilco. Stand by."

As they pulled her in slowly, then docked the starfighter, Jaina passed the time by wondering who the hell had been flying against her. If Wedge had been twenty again, and force-sensitive to boot, she'd have thought of him, or someone like him, as being her adversary. Then Jag knocked on the canopy, and she pulled the manual release, dropping down into the repulsorfield she had installed for the purpose.

Wincing at the charring on the visible parts of her fighter, she limped over to the starboard airlock, where Tahiri was waiting, saber out but unlit, for the airlock to finish cycling.

"who is it." Jaina asked, assuming it would be a rogue Jedi or someone similar.

"I have no idea." Tahiri replied. "But he sounds cultured, urbane and well-spoken over the comm."

"So did Grand Moff Tarkin," Jaina replied. "And look what sort of man he was."

Before either of them could continue, the airlock chimed, before a figure straight out of an ancient history holo stepped out.

~0~

As she lay asleep, Vestara felt a faint tickle of warning through the Force, which seemed to come from Ben.

When she opened her eyes, she screamed. A masked figure in tan robes was bending over her, aiming a rifle at her neck. At the sound, several more of the creatures approached, and she got her first good look at the face.

It was completely wrapped in cloth, except for two dark eye-pieces and a pair of metal prongs coming from either side of a filter mask. The beings pressed two rifles into her neck, before pulling her out of bed, only wearing her underwear, and twisting her hands behind her back.

When she tried to gather the force, one of the figures slammed his gun down on her head, stunning her and dissipating the concentration she had built up.

They quickly wrapped straps, made from a fibrous substance, around her wrists, before securing them to the back of her knickers, and then placing a connective cord between them.

With her hands pinioned, she was taken out of the building, and dumped face down on the sand, with a foot pressed into the back of her neck. Her captor knelt down on her briefly tying a strip of the same cord used to bind her hands into her mouth, making it nearly impossible to make more than a muffled moaning sound. As he did so, she felt him snap the wire of her bracelet, accidentally, with a small hook on his robe.

From inside, she could hear the smashing of her few possessions, and shuddered as the holocomm was brought out and every chip individually shattered on a rock.

After the gang had finished trashing her hut, her ankles were also secured, incredibly tightly, causing a constant, distracting sensation of agony around her ankles. Then one of her captors threw her over a shoulder and set off. As they walked, a gunbutt was slammed into the back of her head and she knew no more.


	4. Chapter 4

As the Shadow dropped out of hyperspace, Luke was reminded of both his childhood and the austere beauty of the desert world he had once called home. As he guided the space yacht towards the planet he had once called home, the memories were almost overwhelming. _Uncle Owen. Aunt Beru. I love you, always._ He thought, remembering the first loss he had suffered at the hands of the empire.

When they got to the edge of the atmosphere, he also remembered the first time he had left the world, aboard the Falcon, fleeing imperials who were after Artoo and C-3PO, and the secrets they contained. He had been going to Alderaan. _Chewie. Han. Leia._ The memories of the more recent losses of his three closest friends drove a second vibrodagger straight into the Jedi master's heart. _We don't need to stay that long, not long enough for things to become a problem_. He decided.

Next to him, Ben was sitting in the co-pilot's chair, a look of concern on his face. It had taken them five days to get to the planet, and Luke knew all to well how long someone would be able to last in the dune sea without water. He reckoned she would have lasted about eighteen hours, possibly thirty-six if she had managed a hibernation trance. When he had told Ben she might be dead, Ben had seemed to collapse in on himself for a second, before opening up again and reaching out.

"She's still alive." He had reported.

After about half an hour of flying, guided by his knowledge of tatooine weather, Luke managed to put the Shadow down in Fort Tusken, dropping the yacht into a docking bay with the Darklighter family motif blinking at one end.

After comming Dera Darklighter, and receiving permission to leave the Shadow in her docking bay, Luke and Ben disembarked, wearing a pair of heavy sandcloaks.

"We're going to need transport." Luke reminded his son. _Another pair of speeder bikes wouldn't be a good idea, not in this part of the planet. Tuskens could hit podracers, so they'd have no chance of missing us at speeder bike velocity_. "And it needs to be enclosed. We need protection from Tuskens, and the suns."

As they continued, it wasn't long until Luke spotted what he was after.

Sitting in the yard outside of a scrapyard, he noticed an imperial hoverscout, missing the various weapons but otherwise appearing to be in relatively good condition. It had been repainted from the original imperial white to a more useful tan, almost perfectly replicating the colour of the sand on the planet.

The forward laser cannon had been replaced by an advanced array of search sensors, indicated as being able to detect a life firm for up to ten kilometres in a narrow cone in front of the sensor array. The main turret had simply been removed, with a plate of durasteel welded into the mount.

Entering the shop, Luke quickly browsed through the racks of used blasters, taking a pair of longblasters from one rack, and two e-11 blaster carbines from a second. After examining the weapons, Luke took the two longblasters out into the shop's yard, before testing the scope calibration on a target on top of the wall about two hundred metres away.

Seeing the two offworlders, the Dug running the shop quickly hurried over to where Luke was standing, tweaking the scope calibration on one of the rifles.

"You buying that?" the Dug unceremoniously challenged the Jedi master.

Calmly, Luke turned round, before using the Force to lower his hood.

"I would have been, if they were calibrated better."

"They worked fine before you came along."

"Really?" Luke said, in a manner that suggested he had no confidence in that statement. "It was an inch out when I tested it."

"You better buy it." The alien spat, before glimpsing the distinctive hilt of a lightsaber under the sand cloak. "I meant, it would be correct for you to buy that weapon now, Master Jedi." He stuttered, realising he had been directing his anger at a Jedi.

"I know that." Luke snapped. "I will give you fifty credits for each of these rifles, and forty-five each for the carbines."

"400 hundred each. For all four will be one thousand four hundred."

"I could buy your entire stock for that much. I think I might be able to pay you one hundred each."

"Thirteen hundred."

"I'll take the hoverscout as well for that."

"That's twenty thousand. Add four hundred and you can have the blasters"

"Four thousand." The Jedi master replied, one hand going to his lightsaber.

"Hey hey hey" the dug replied, backing away slightly. "You can have 'em at four then."

"Good. The keys." Luke's tone did not suggest arguing would be a good idea, reinforced by the hand resting on his lightsaber hilt unobtrusively.

The Dug darted over to the counter, and pulled a set of swipe cards off the wall.

"here." He grated, before receiving the credit chip for the agreed amount.

As he placed the chip in the hand of the shop owner, Luke heard the distinctive snap-hiss of someone activating a lightsaber in the street.

"kriff it." He muttered under his breath, before pulling the keys off the rack with the force and marching outside, where Ben was standing off a group of tatooine street bruisers, several of whom had their blasters drawn.

"What the darkside is going on out here?" He yelled, directing the majority of the force at the thugs.

"None of your business, lumhead. Get lost." One of them replied, turning his head and blaster towards Luke. Feeling the man tensing to pull the trigger, Luke simply smashed him into the wall with a force blast, before holding him there telekinetically.

"The name is Skywalker. And I think you lot had better get going." He announced to the gang, before dropping the leader onto the ground.

As the six heavies ran off, Luke picked up his bag, before heading over to the hoverscout, and opening the main entry hatch.

The inside had been upgraded quite considerably from the imperial stock model, with four bunks fitted in place of the rear turret and its generators, and luxury seats installed in place of the original military models. There was also a small refresher cabin in the very rear of the cabin.

Depositing his bags into one of the storage lockers, Luke began the power-up sequence, just as Ben took his seat at the sensor console.

"All good." He said, rotating the scanner head 360 degrees to check the mounting was fully functional. After running through checks on all of the remaining systems, the Skywalkers set off into the Jundland Wastes.

~0~

Standing in front of Jaina, Jag and Tahiri was a red skinned humanoid male about the same height as Jag. The being had a face adorned with intricate jewellery, with small facial tentacles and bone spurs breaking up the almost prefect symmetry. For Tahiri, the most striking feature of the man was the open, yellow eyes, which reminded her of another friend. Caedus had had eyes like him. Then she recoiled. "Sith!" she screamed, her had going to her lightsaber hilt, only to find Jag's hand already resting on top of the weapon, preventing her drawing it.

"Indeed. Greetings, Jedi." The man said, his voice surprisingly soft. "It seems I must surrender myself and this," he said, holding out his lightsaber by the emmiter, "to you."

Jaina took the lightsaber hilt first, and fastened it to her belt next to and below her own lightsaber.

"My name is Darth Jiido, dark lord and emperor's wrath of the sith empire. It is my pleasure to meet you, Master Fel, Jedi Veila." He then knelt before Jag, before continuing, "My lord Fel."

Shocked, Jag stood speechless for a moment, before his chiss training kicked in. "you may rise, Jiido." He said, in a pre-emptory fashion suggestive of a head of state receiving an unaccustomed honour. "I have no rank, except that of being husband to Master Jaina Solo Fel."

"You were imperial head of state, were you not? And was your father not a baron."

"That is immaterial now. I am a rankless exile from my family, and I am no longer a head of state." Jag stated.

"I see. And Jedi Veila, I am a sith in more than creed. I am a Red Sith and my forefathers roamed korriban when Adas sat on her throne."

"Your kind are… well extinct." Jaina stammered, recognising the species from her history classes in middle school "you died to the last in the second great galactic war."

"I remember the final days of that conflict well." The Sith replied. "I remember the days when my master the emperor fell at the hands of a Jedi, and your warriors roamed our worlds, killing all who stood before them. It was no war, not at the end. It was genocide."

"We would never have committed such an atrocity. The Jedi protect life in all its forms."

"Your kind, and your republic, strode our worlds, killing everyone who stood before them. There was no mercy shown to civilians, children or adult, and no surrender was honoured for longer than it took to take weapons from their owners."

When she looked into the man's eyes, Jaina realised the complete truth of what he had said.

"Our survivors fled to the deep core." The Sith continued. "There, we built a vast stasis warren, and we activated it, sealing ourselves inside for more than three and a half thousand years. And now we return. Our fleets are preparing to deploy, and our warriors are mustered to destroy your republic forever."

"And why are you telling me this?" Jaina asked, shocked at the revelations of the past.

"I want to stop the genocide before it returns. You destroyed us once before, and you would destroy us again if we attacked you."

"And your other reasons?" Jaina pressed, feeling the Sith holding something back.

"I do not believe in our supremacy being one of our birthrights. When I fought the republic before, I saw Jedi stand between a column of troops and a huddle of refugees, fighting to protect the innocent until they fell. I saw Sith use similar columns as shields between themselves and republic troops. I saw republic soldiers fight from positions that left them no retreat, covering the retreat of allies and comrades. I want to be part of that tradition."

~0~

When he saw the hut that had once belonged to his mentor, Luke was surprised by the tarpaulin stretched over the roof, before suddenly seeing the smoke rising up from the structure. Beside him, Luke felt Ben start, at the sight, before drawing his lightsaber and vaulting out of the hoverscout.

When Ben reached the entrance to the hut, he saw the bed overturned, and the few items inside scattered everywhere, as if a man had systematically tipped over and then smashed everything in the hut, before setting fire to it.

In the centre of the floor, somehow uncovered by any item or debris, Ben saw a small patch of sand, discoloured in a way he had hoped not to see. It had had blood pooled on it; he knew that from his training in the guard. And suddenly he knew what he had to do.

Reaching into the force, he flow walked, back to the previous night.

Standing in the centre of the hut, he saw Vestara sleeping, smiling slightly, wearing only her undergarments. Despite himself, he moved closer to study her sleeping form, and was so engrossed in her body that he missed the entrance of several beings into the hut, so silently did they move.

Suddenly, one of them moved into his field of vision, and he started, suddenly sending out a useless warning to Vestara through the Force.

To his surprise, she stirred slightly, before looking up into the face of a Tusken raider, his rifle pressed to her neck, and then she screamed. At the sound, several more raiders approached, before dragging her out of bed, wrestling her into a kneeling position, with her arms held behind her. Ben couldn't help but wince, having been restrained like that several times during CSF arrest training.

Abruptly, one of the Tuskens brought the butt of his rifle down on her head, stunning her as a number of bands of what looked like bantha-cord were pulled out and used to secure her wrists behind her and then connecting them to her knickers. She was then carried out of the hut, and then Ben snapped back into the present, suddenly remembering something his aunt and uncle had found at a Tusken camp nearby, in Tatooine terms.

As he turned around, he saw his father gently picking something out of the sand, and recognised it instantly as a bracelet he had made for Vestara, using the force to meld a set of crystal shards onto a length of gold wire he had taken from the electrical repair kit. It was snapped.

Angrily, Ben turned to his father, pulling the small trinket from his hand with the Force.

"Dad, they're taking her to the valley of the spirits."

"Why?" Luke asked, suddenly looking alarmed.

"To sacrifice her to my grandfather."

"I went there just once, Ben. It scared the sithspit out of me."

"She's there now." Ben stated. "I'm going." He continued, running back towards the hoverscout, "If we don't get there soon, she's dead."

Feeling the utter truth of the boy's words, Luke wasted no time force flipping to the driver's side of the craft, before diving inside and starting her up.

As soon as Ben was aboard, the hoverscout fishtailed away.

~0~

Regaining consciousness after a blow to the head was not a pleasant experience for Vestara. Her hands were immobile, seemingly trapped above her as she vainly tried to rub the aching lump on the top of her head, before her memories kicked in. Realising her situation, the Sith girl screamed, helplessly, into a thick wad of fibres, held firmly into her mouth by a cord secured around her head. Her hands, she realised, were tied to a frame above her head, and when she tried to move her ankles she found that they too were bound incredibly tightly to poles.

After several minutes of frantic squirming, she stopped fighting the cords, deciding that there was not point, before reaching out with the Force.

She felt Ben, concerned for her, and his father, deep in his own mind, replaying a earlier visit, where she saw a glimpse of a blood spattered archway, and grimaced at the guessed at purpose in his mind.

_Ves!_ Ben responded to her force touch after a moment. _Are you ok?_

_I love you_. She replied, glad that they would finally be reunited. _And I think so._

Abruptly, however, her situation changed.

Two large Tuskens swung the doors of her prison open, before marching inside, cutting her hands free and dragging her toward the entrance. She could feel Ben closing rapidly, and just had to hope he arrived in time.

As his father flew the deadly slalom course of the Jundland wastes, Ben was slightly surprised by the way his father seemed to be flying on auto pilot. With the taps open, he knew it would take them just four and a half minutes to arrive at their destination, but the final jumbled impression of being led outside he had received from Vestara told him that if they were lucky, they would arrive with seconds to spare.

As she was dragged though the crowd of jeering raiders, Vestara struggled as much as she could, still too concussed to attempt force usage. Every time she tried to break free, her arms were forced up behind her another couple of degrees, and she quickly stopped trying to escape. Ahead, she could see the archway Luke had shown her, and the two leather cords attached to it.

Before she could think of fighting back, her two guards took her arms and forced them into position to be secured, and she could feel the thongs suddenly holding her upright, helpless, as the expectation built to a fever pitch.

Next to her, she heard a Tusken, wearing elaborate robes, compared to the rest of his tribe, begin to speak, and she began to pray.

When the hoverscout reached the berm overlooking the camp, Ben was already opening the hatch next to his seat, a longblaster ready in his hands. By the time Luke Skywalker slewed the craft to a stop, Ben was already taking up a firing position, overlooking a scene straight out of his nightmares.

A band of Tuskens were formed into a semi-circle, and he could see Vestara's slight form bound almost motionless to a arch, which looked like it was made from bantha ribs. Behind her, a large male Tusken, he presumed, was readying a gaffi stick for an overhead blow, resting the weapon's spiked tip against the crown of her head.

Dropping into a crouch, he raised the rifle to his shoulder, looking down the scope.

_Range, 250 yards. Target, one big Tusken. _He ran though in his head, before taking his shot as the executioner brought his weapon up in a backswing.

As he fired the shot, he wondered where the hell his father was.

~0~

As he had brought the hoverscout to a stop, Luke had seen the sky suddenly change from crystal blue to black, and suddenly Ben vanished from beside him. As he sat there, confused, he became aware of a swoop bike pulling up feet away from the hoverscout, turning round, be saw a man, wearing black clothing climb off the craft, and go down the slope, barely making a sound.

When he got to the bottom of the slope, Luke lost track of him for a second, then caught a glimpse of him ducking into a tent, avoiding the two sentries standing in front of it by crawling under the back wall. What seemed like two minutes later, the man re-appeared, cutting down the two guards from behind with his lightsaber, before killing several of the dogs the Tusken's kept as pets and guard animals.

Stunned, Luke watched as the blue lightsaber strobed through the night, killing men and women and children alike. Faintly, he could hear the voice of a man, pleading with the man to stop, but no heed was paid, and the Tuskens died to the last.

As the man stalked back up the hill, Luke finally saw his face, and it was one he recognised all too well. "Dad." he said, as the force image of Anakin Skywalker walked past him, carrying a shrouded body over his shoulder, before fading back into the bright sunlight of a afternoon on Tattoine.

Then he heard Ben fire his longblaster once, then a hail of returning gunfire from tusken slugthrowers.


	5. Chapter 5

Behind her, Vestara heard the shot strike bone, burning its way through the head of her would-be executioner in a femtosecond before fusing the sand six feet away from him. Almost instantly, though, she heard the snapping report of several Tusken slugthrowers, firing, she guessed, at Ben.

Turning her head as much as she was able to, she managed to look up onto the berm overlooking them camp, and saw Ben in a firing crouch, blazing away with a longblaster. Then his head whipped back and to one side, and he collapsed, boneless, down the slope in an uncontrolled roll.

~0~

"You want to defect?" Jaina asked Jiido, when she had finished processing his last statement.

"Yes." The Sith replied, visibly relaxing slightly at the realisation he was unlikely to be killed by this new Jedi order. "To become a Jedi would be my ultimate objective."

"And you think that the Order will just, open its doors to someone belonging to an extinct, galaxy conquering species of marauding savages?"

"They did when we last strode the stars." Jiido replied, refusing to let her induce the slightest anger in him.

"They allowed Sith into the order?"

"In my time as a Sith, the Jedi accepted a dark councillor, one of our greatest Sith, and many others who preferred honour to senseless slaughter. I never came close enough to the order without my starship to defect."

"Why couldn't you have defected with your starship?" Jaina asked, confused.

"Because it would have exploded as it docked. There was also a Twi'lek. I had feelings for her…"

"And you could never have given her up." Jaina completed, feeling the other's pain at the thoughts of that being.

"She died on Dromund Kaas. It was my fault. I only wanted to join the defence, evacuate the slaves. She was caught by a group of Republic soldiers. She was gunned down before my eyes…" he paused, his anger and sadness mixing in the force. "I wanted to kill them all. But I held back. It would have been an insult to her, to what she taught me." Then Jiido's eyes filled with the tears of long suppressed emotion, and he dropped to the deck and simply wept.

~0~

From a position barely six feet away from his son, Luke saw the strike of a Tusken slugthrower round hit his son in the side of the head, before punching out through the rear of the skull an instant later, rocking his head back, before the position of Ben's torso and arms tipped his body down the dune in a uncontrolled tumble, before depositing him in a pile at the foot of the dune, half covered by sand and with his rifle lying on top of him.

Almost instantly, Luke felt a surging rush of anger of an intensity he had almost forgotten being able to feel, and a burning urge to take his lightsaber to the Tusken responsible for firing the shot that had hit Ben, then kill the rest. There was something in the place that suggested the course of action as perfectly valid, almost encouragingly, and that was what shook Luke out of the idea, the realisation that the place wanted it to happen.

Instead, he watched, lying prone in a small pit near the crest, as the warriors slowly approached Ben, who he could still not think of as dead, despite the strike to his temple almost certainly having penetrated the boy's skull.

From his position, Luke watched as Vestara was cut free from the frame she was bound to, before her hands were cruelly twisted behind her back, and secured there using bantha hide thongs similar to those which had restrained her. The Tuskens then marched her, using an underhand grip that would have seen any security officer disciplined on the spot, into a large, permanent looking hut, built by laying a bantha wool cloth over a frame constructed from four large bantha ribs. Once she had been thrown inside, her stagger indicating, to Luke, a possible concussion, which was also, in his mind, consistent with her lack of Force usage to escape or even defend herself.

To his surprise, none of the Tuskens thronging the area attempted to kill her, first while she was still bound to the execution frame, or later when she was being dragged into the prison tent, helpless. Instead, the mob of Tuskens contented themselves with roaring and braying, directed at the body of his son, before it was dragged away, and thrown into the same tent that Vestara had been hurled into.

Despite the consideration of just killing them all, his vision reminded him that such an action was the cause of the whole ritual, and that simple rescue was all Vestara could expect, especially since she was sharing a tent with his son's body.

Releasing the tension that had crept into his muscles, he forced himself to relax, before beginning to probe the camp area through the force, taking a survey of the number and locations of every Tusken, but also picking up anger and frustration from them, directed at their image of his son.

The image itself was of an intruder who had interrupted one of their most holy ceremonies, but there was also an undercurrent of fear.

When he felt that, Luke deployed the compact Special Forces macrobinoculars he habitually carried. Through them Luke saw warriors holding onto children, rather than letting them walk nearby, as had been normally been the case when he previously spied on Tusken camps as a young man. The few sentries around the perimeter also looked on edge, and were fingering their rifles rather than simply carrying them by the shoulder strap.

Watching them, Luke began to wonder something. _If I just stood up and walked down, would they just flee, especially if I ignited my lightsaber to signify what I was?_

At about that moment, an object out in the sands moved.

Through his macrobinoculars, Luke observed a large womp rat, a few shades of tan darker than the desert behind it. Then, from the camp, there came a crackle of shots, each report from the rifles sounding like a cap-blaster going off, before the sand around the unfortunate womp rat was riddled with rapidly and therefore inaccurately aimed shots, sending it scuttling from sight.

_I think that answers the question._ He decided. _Plan B time._

What plan B happened to be, he had little idea, except that it was not likely to involve him simply walking over to the Tusken camp and being turned into a colander when they panicked. _Then again, given the calibre of their marksmanship when panicking, I'm in less danger than if they were stormtroopers._

Regardless, he decided not to risk it. Instead, despite the inevitable risk to Vestara's life and limb of a delay, Luke knew he would have to wait until nightfall, before making a force-assisted stealth entry into the hut and recovering both Vestara and his son's body. From the way she had been unable to support her own wait, Luke suspected she would have to be carried away from the site, along with his son's body.

Despite being a Jedi master, he knew he did not have the physical capability to carry both, which meant one of them would have to be levitated, despite the increased risk of a Tusken seeing a person floating in mid-air.

Resigned to the risk, Luke quickly rolled behind the dune's crest before picking himself up and, taking care to stay low, walking back to the hoverscout, freezing each time a sporadic burst of gunfire engaged a sand fall or other sudden movement in the desert.

When he returned to the hoverscout, Luke used the manual release mechanism on the door, rather than risking any electronic sounds from the automated system.

Hauling himself up over the cushion slightly, Luke dropped into the pilot's seat, taking care to dog shut the hatch behind him.

As he sat down, he thought that he had momentarily glimpsed another vehicle, painted like his, in a tan tone almost identical to the desert, sliding behind a nearby dune. It was gone so fast, however, that he decided it had been a trick of the suns, which were already much lower in the sky than when Ben had acted.

To still the burning urge to act sooner than planned, he loaded up the craft's comm log, which showed several transmissions relayed via the _Jade Shadow_, most of which had come from Ossus, informing him of minor issues and fights between apprentices, but there was also a formal letter from Wynn Dorvan, who had been confirmed as chief of state by an overwhelming majority in the senate. Reading it through, Luke was reminded of the personal relationship between his sister and the man, with both having a great deal of respect for each other's level of integrity.

Once the suns had gone down, and two full standard hours had passed, Luke moved out, moving carefully and drawing on the force to muffle his steps and any other slight sound that he might produce. He had switched into a set of dark khaki robes, which were an almost perfect match for the desert around him.

Careful to avoid silhouetting himself against the night sky, Luke dropped over the dune's crest, before using the force to float down it, carefully avoiding contact with the sand, but staying within a foot of the dune's face at all times.

When he reached the bottom, Luke carefully settled onto the sand, before drawing the hilt of his lightsaber and waiting for ten minutes, carefully reconnoitering the camp with dozens of rapid, very narrowly focused force probes, before decreasing the range of sweeps to ten feet, and then moving out, slowly and very carefully, making sure that he was not about to walk into a Tusken sentry, mastiff or even a wandering bantha calf.

When his sweeps picked up Vestara, he stopped, carefully crouched, then expanded his sphere of responsibility out in a flat disk, probing until he had located all of the Tusken guards, who he was able to distinguish from Vestara simply because they were scared, rather than barely conscious.

Carefully, he probed their minds, seeking the centre of mental activity that controlled sleep. Then he calmed them down, gently allowing them to feel calmer and more relaxed, before dropping them into the deepest sleep they were capable of in seconds.

With the sentries thus dealt with, he quickly but quietly removed the large bar holding the door shut, then entered.

Inside, he could dimly feel Vestara pressed against something, her mind heavy and grief-ridden. Rather than use his lightsaber, both because of the sound and the light emission, Luke flicked the small survival knife from his belt, a force probe having revealed that the cords were tied so as to make any force exerted on them tighten the loops around her wrists, regardless of direction of exertion.

Rather than risk severe nerve damage to her, Luke leant down, using the vibroknife in an unpowered mode, simple relying on the cerasteel edge to cut through the tough leather thongs, guiding the weapon with the force.

When her hands were free, she reached out and touched Ben's face momentarily, pressing her fingers to his lips, before pulling away and twisting into Luke's side, hear tears dampening his robe in seconds.

Gently, the Jedi master leant down to his son's body, preparing to act as a pallbearer once more, before his danger sense went wild.

~0~

When the Sith had broken down, Tahiri had turned away, reckoning it an act, before feeling the surge of grief and pain that came surging through the force, before she continued into the cockpit, the emotions having re-awakened her own emotions about Anakin Solo, her own lost love. Even though they had never consummated their relationship, she had kept herself until her latest brush with the dark side, when she had coupled with his brother, imaging inside that it was really Anakin. With everything that had happened since, she had never felt the desire for another man, not since Caedus had died and she had left the order. The prison stay she had experienced over her trial and death sentence had changed nothing in that regard.

_I miss you, Anakin. Every day_. She thought to herself, before suddenly he stepped into the cockpit, whole and healthy, only the faintest blue tinge telling her this was not a material manifestation.

"I miss you too." He replied to the unspoken thought. "I still love you as mush as I ever did. Despite everything you did because of my death. Pellaeon on my tab."

"How?" Tahiri asked. " I pulled the trigger. Anakin, I killed a 93 year old man, just for doing what was right."

"And I do not blame you. Think of that Tahiri as Riina, not the person you are today. Stop torturing yourself over her actions."

"I can't." she responded. "Nearly every night I feel that moment all over again. I feel the slight kick against my wrist as the bolt exits the barrel of my sidearm. I feel the vibration from his body falling to the deck. And I hear myself offer him his life if he betrays what he was ready to die for. I did that."

"Did you want to act that way?" he asked her, his face neutral. "Did you want to kill him?"

"no." she whispered, before Anakin faded from view, and her eyes filled with tears.

Behind her, Jaina was standing quietly, her hand holding a tissue.

"He loved you." She told Tahiri, before helping the younger woman to her chair, pressing the cloth into her hand. "I don't blame you either." She simply said. "I blame Caedus." Then her own hand shook slightly, and a single tear ran down her cheek.

"I came to tell you that I've provisionally accepted Jiido into the Jedi order, and that he is now an apprentice without a master. That will stay the same until we reach Ossus and the council assign him a master permanently. He will share your bunkroom, as there are only two. Once you get to know him, I think you'll like him. After all, you saved his life."

The reminder of the fact she had flicked Jag's cannon controls over to ion just before he fired on the Sith lord rocked Tahiri, and she realised she had been projecting her attitude to Caedus and the various lost tribe Sith she had met onto the Red Sith, without giving him a chance to show he was different to them.

"I'll give him a chance then." She responded, before swinging round to the sensor console she was seated at, and punching up the gain of the _Maiden_'s active sensors.

In seconds they pinpointed the location of the debris field that had once been the most famous starship in the galaxy.

The _Falcon_ was now two disks, spinning around each other in space, with a cloud of water vapour and other substances engulfing both.

As the _Maiden_, with Jag now having come through to the controls, moved forwards, dozens of laser scores and penetrations showed across the hull, with a row of massive craters along the line of damage betraying the cause of the vessel's destruction.

With Jag at the controls, Jaina and Tahiri suited up in their vac suits, which had been manufactured by a company specialising in bespoke suits for millionaires and senior officers. They were manufactured from a laminate of beskar fibre, cortosis fibre and durasteel fibres, with a rated endurance of sixteen hours EV before the user would die.

The suits also used micro-jets for precision manoeuvring, with a neural link to provide exact control, along with a miniature inertial compensator unit to allow rapid manoeuvres. A persistent rumour that alliance Special Forces had ordered a hundred suits, was, Jaina suspected, correct. They were saberproof, micrometeor resistant and vitally, very comfortable to wear.

Jetting out of the airlock, Jaina and Tahiri used their thrusters to slowly close with the spinning hull halves, aiming for the internal corridor. The thrusters worked by imagining where you wanted to be, and then the computer took over and did the rest of the flying

"Tahiri, go for the ladder well." Jaina commed, knowing that the ladder would provide a boarding point with good handholds. However, as they got closer, she saw that the ladder well had clearly taken a direct hit from a plunging turbolaser bolt, annihilating the ladder and fittings, along with both quad cannons.

"Just aim for the hull." Tahiri called back, her sudden good humour clear in her tone.

Sighing, Jaina floated into the cockpit access corridor and front saloon, catching herself on what had been the falcon's dejarik table.

From that position, she guided Tahiri inside the hulled ship, before the two women activated their magclamps, which were a standard feature mounted on the sole of every vac suit, allowing them to walk through the rotating vessel to the cockpit.

The cockpit itself had barely been touched, with the flash fire which had ripped through the ship causing little damage other than to the organics, although a laser strike had decimated a lump of charred metals Jaina tentatively identified as C-3PO, from the golden tinge of the least burnt sections.

Her parents where still strapped into their seats, looking almost asleep. Jaina moved closer and realised they had died instantly, and before the vacuum reached them, from the relatively calm expressions frozen onto their faces.

Forcing herself not to cry, Jaina gently prised her father's hands from the Falcon's joystick and throttle, before loading him into a bodybag held open by Tahiri. Wincing at the strips of burnt skin adhering to her gloves, she repeated the process with her mother, before placing her gently into a body bag. Leia's features had barely been spoiled by time, and were still almost intact, despite the fire and exposure to hard vacuum.

Once the bags had been sealed shut, Jaina leant against the side of the cockpit for an instant, activating one of the many secret compartments and sliding out a small flask she knew to contain ancient correlian whiskey. Slipping it into a pocket, she propelled herself down the corridor and into the other half of the hull, leaving Tahiri to transport the remains back to the _Maiden_ alone.

In the second section, she landed into her parent's cabin, before walking over to the hardened case containing her mother most treasured possession, Killik Twilight. She had secured it within the tranparisteel casing after Vestara blew the original cockpit off of the _Falcon_ with a thermal detonator. It contained all of the software and hardware required to maintain the painting, and was vacuum proof. With a heavy heart, she released the case from the wall, noticing a datapad in the bottom.

Using one of the rescue straps from her vac suit's pockets, she secured to her belt, and float back across, unsure about whether to enjoy the whiskey or save it.


	6. Chapter 6

Twisting upright, turning away from his son's body, Luke saw that the entrance to the tent was suddenly full of Tuskens, all of whom were aiming their rifles into the tent.

"Sithspit!" he hissed, angrily, before pushing Vestara to the floor, and reaching for his lightsaber.

He knew he would never reach it in time. Even as he reached for it, his body was tensing for the crashing volley of bullets which would throw him back over his son and Vestara, almost certainly dead before he landed.

~0~

Outside in the wastes, Voort SaBinring, aka Piggy, the gammorean leader of wraith squadron, was hiding under a sandcloak, twenty metres to the north of the tent. Taking care to lie perfectly still, the gamorrean had carefully watched Luke's entire insertion through a high powered set of electrobinoculars, set to detect infrared radiation, and use it to produce an image, rather than attempting to use visible light, which, at three in the morning, local time, was at levels incredibly close to zero, despite the desert conditions.

When he saw a Tusken he suspected to be the warleader making the rounds, he considered shooting him, using the sniper rifle he was covering the camp with, but quickly reconsidered when he saw a half dozen warriors, only visible through infrared, trailing the warleader.

With no option to fire, he was unable to do anything to prevent the discovery of Luke Skywalker, but he would be able to act to save the Jedi master, he decided, as the patrol silently discovered the sleeping sentries, before seeing the open door of the tent.

A single braying call summoned another dozen or so warriors, and they quickly and silently moved in on the tent, rifles raised.

Despite his orders to observe, piggy knew he could not stand by and let a pack of Tuskens butcher Luke Skywalker, who, above anything else, he counted as a friend. Annoyed at the course of his logic, He said "Wraiths," subvocalising the word and using the new, inbuilt comlink of his translator implant to reach the other members of the unit scattered around the tent side of the Tusken encampment, before giving them the simple instruction. "Go Go Go."

Instantly, a number of humanoid figures broke cover from almost identical hides to the one he was using, and began stalking across the desert like sand panthers, only several times as deadly.

They didn't bother to draw their weapons. They didn't need any.

The first the raiders at the rear of the mob knew was when Huhunna, the unit Wookiee, grabbed the two nearest warriors and hurled them away from the camp. Piggy winced at the sight, knowing how much damage that effortless pair of throws would actually inflict.

The second wraith into the fray was Wran Narcassan, nominally the unit sniper, but just as adept with the less fatal methods required in a brawl, which he proceeded to demonstrate on several Tuskens, knocking them down with single, casual appearing blows and pushes. The fact they stayed down showed just how good he was.

The final member of the team, Jesmin Tainer, had other methods excluding brute force and precision, using the force to concuss targets for the other wraiths to down, and disarming those who tried to bring gaffi sticks into play by simply ripping the weapons out of their hands. Within ten seconds, all twenty Tuskens were down and out.

Instants before they hit the Tuskens, Luke felt the three intent purposes closing in behind them. Knowing they were on their way, he began to draw in the force, simply to create a shield to stop Vestara being hit.

Despite his experience with a wide variety of beings and Jedi, he was a little stunned when the first sound produced by the small group of beings was the bass rumble of a Wookie warcry, followed by several flying Tuskens whizzing away from the back of the group. The smaller, but equally effective humans following behind took a flank each.

One of them, a man, began to decimate the Tuskens in front of him, dropping them in a blur of hands and feet, while the other, a female, began to use methods Luke was more familiar with, confiscating a gaffi stick using the force, before using the blunt components of the weapon to fell Tuskens, usually via cranial trauma or blows to the stomach, the latter followed up with palm strikes and other incapacitating blows.

After about thirty seconds, Luke saw a familiar figure come trotting out of the desert. Although there were not many gammoreans he knew by sight, the simple and efficient manner of the figure, slightly smaller than usual for a male of his species, while somewhat admittedly coupled with the unique force presence, enabled Luke to tell Luke he was in the presence of Voort SaBinring, who he knew, preferred Piggy, despite the slightly derogatory overtones such a name carried for a gammorean.

He also knew that this particular operative had resigned his post and his nickname after a mission went wrong during the closing stages of the Yuuzhan Vong war, and now held the post of a mathematics professor at a university on Ayceezee.

"Piggy." Luke soberly greeted the gammorean, holding out a hand for the other to shake. It was taken, shaken and released.

"We don't have time now, Master Skywalker." The gammorean stated. "There is a ninety-five percent likelihood of three hundred karked off sand people boiling out of this camp in the next ten minutes looking for heads."

"I understand that. I need your medic to do a casualty assessment of an injured person, and I also need a bodybag."

"who for?" the gammorean asked, feeling the answer before he was told.

"my son." Luke Skywalker replied, before dropping to his knees

~0~

As Master Skywalker exited the hut, lightsaber in hand, Vestara had pulled herself across to Ben, before groggily taking one of his hands and simply beginning to cry. He was gone. It was all her fault. As she held his limp hand, she remembered the only time they had come truly close to intimacy, having got all the way from the kissing to the removing of clothing stage before Master Skywalker had returned, and nearly caught them in the same quarters, naked and wrapped around each other. The hand which had then caressed her breasts was now a limp, warm lump of meat, without any of the fine co-ordination she had enjoyed from him, and his lips were just a pair of rubbery protrusions from his face, rather than the delivery method for his surprising set of skills in both speech and kissing. He was just dumped in a heap on the sandy floor, dead.

With tears coursing down her cheeks, Vestara leant down and gently kissed him, full on the lips, before, still unsteady in terms of fine motor control, gently easing him onto his back, seeing the hole in the back of his skull, before laying him down, and picking up his arms, crossing them over his chest. The defined red hole in his left temple reminded her he was not going to ever get up, so she eased him into a final position, sliding his legs until they were parallel. Suddenly, she reached up and wiped the blood away from the hole in his head, pressing the blood to her lips, before wiping it onto her robe.

"I love you." She whispered to him, even though she knew he would never hear her say it.

Behind her, she felt a naggingly familiar presence slowly approaching her from behind.

Carefully, she searched her memory, and then placed him. It was a devaronian male who had been a member of the smuggling group in Fort Tusken she had been sent to intimidate nearly the longest week of her life ago.

"Miss Khai, may I examine you?" the alarming looking male asked her, his voice surprisingly gentle and relaxing to her ears. "I'm a medic."

"yes." She replied, before leaning back against the post she had spent the night bound to, suddenly aware of her aches and pains. The red-skinned hands, despite their taloned fingers, moved gently across her body. "Patient is a human female, aged fourteen to seventeen, with rope burns to wrists and ankles consistent with restraint, and a subcutaneous haematoma on the back of skull, suggestive of blunt force head trauma." The man paused, before shining a light into each of her eyes. "inconsistent pupil response from left and right sides suggest possible concussion." As she listened to him, Vestara thought the monologue would have been more in place in a EMD trauma room, rather than in a small tent in the Tatooine wastes. She was also surprised at the being paying no undue attention to her breasts, to which she would have expected any man to apply more pressure than strictly required during a medical examination, before a small patch was placed on her neck, covering the jugular, and pulsing steadily with light.

"It's a vital signs monitor." The man said, at the slightly confused glance she gave him. "I'm Drikall Bessarah, by the way. I'm the medic for the wraiths." After a moment, he continued, "and I believe you have a concussion coupled with a cracked skull, judging by your vital signs."

"Can you do anything for him?" She asked, nodding slightly towards Ben, before wincing at the band of pain the simple motion sent though her skull.

"I don't believe so, Miss Khai." The devaronian replied, keeping his voice calm and steady. Seeing the look of desolation that crossed her face at the statement, he continued; "But I will examine him to be sure. Was it a blaster or a slugthrower round?" he asked, looking at the hole and running through his training and knowledge.

"slugthrower." she replied, before jerking sideways slightly as an almost impossible to detect needle was gently pressed into her neck.

"It's a combined painkiller and concussion relief drug." She was told, before being laid gently backwards onto the floor, and having a jacket slipped under her head.

"Patient is a human male, aged 14-17, with one slugthrower wound to the head, entering at the left temple and exiting through the back of the skull. All signs are consistent with the hypothesis that life is extinct" The devaronian said, before placing a fresh vitals patch on Ben's neck.

Incredibly, it began to pulse very weakly.

* * *

**A.N. **Sorry for the short chapter. Search google for for a discussion on bullet vs head survival chances. Please R&R.


	7. Chapter 7

From behind him, Luke became aware of a sudden commotion, emanating from the tent containing his son's body and Vestara, and allowed a sliver of hope to flow through him that his son had managed to survive a bullet through his skull. Then he drove it back down, before igniting his lightsaber and beginning to march on the Tusken camp.

~0~

Piggy turned round when he heard the familiar snap-hiss of a lightsaber being activated. Behind him, a robed figure was striding, with a gait piggy could only call implacable, towards the main Tusken encampment. An ignited lightsaber was held out at one side of the man, and despite his lack of any force-sensitivity, a chill ran down the gammorean's spine at the sight.

"Master Skywalker." he called, "Wait."

On hearing Piggy's voice, Luke span round, his eyes glowing yellow, before they faded back to normal, and he powered down his lightsaber.

~0~

When he came back to himself, Luke immediately shut his lightsaber down, feeling his sudden rage draining away from him.

"Master Skywalker?" It was the voice of the wraith's medic, a devaronian. "I have some news for you about your son."

"Yes?" Luke replied, not daring to hope.

"He's still alive."

The news dropped Luke to the floor leaving him kneeling, briefly unable to stand because of the sense of relief.

~0~

On board the Sword Maiden, Tahiri was sitting on her bunk, the lower of the two in her cabin, toying with the focusing crystal out of her lightsaber, when Jiido entered the room, his force presence carrying with him a feeling of anger, directed inwards, along with a deep guilt that, to her at least, felt extremely familiar. Without thinking, she reached under her bunk, before levitating one of the several full hip flasks she kept under her pillow over to the Sith, before taking a second one for herself.

"I know what it feels like." she told him, feeling a certain amount of sudden, surprising tenderness towards him.

"Thank you, Jedi Veila." Jiido replied, smiling.

"I lost my love in battle seventeen years ago." she told him, "I still wish I'd died at his side., And please, call me Tahiri."

"When Vette died, I died inside. I wanted to charge the soldiers who had killed her, and hack them apart with my lightsaber. I didn't, but I still wish I had." He told her, a tear rolling down his cheek at the memories.

After several more companionable sips of the Correlian reserve in her flask, Tahiri got up and left the cabin, going to meditate and try to distil her feelings.

Unfortunately, she had to pass the airlock first.

When she saw the opening, all of her feelings for Anakin came crashing back in on her, along with a desire to end it all quickly. She had nearly killed herself several times since he died. The first time, she had taken an overdose of pain medication, but had been found by Jaina several minutes later, and rushed to the med-bay aboard the Venture. Several years later, she'd tried wrist slitting. That time, she'd passed out from blood loss, but the wounds had ultimately closed before she died.

This time though, she wouldn't have any chance of survival once she made her decision. Spacing, she knew, was unsurvivable after about ten seconds.

I love you Anakin, she mentally broadcast. I'll be with you tonight.

Then she pressed the airlock open button.

It didn't depress.

Looking round, she saw Jiido in the opening to the airlock, standing with the hatch open.

~0~

Jiido had all but finished the contents of Tahiri's hipflask when he noticed her disappearance from the room, and followed her with the intention of returning the hipflask, which he noticed, was made of silver and decorated with aurodium filigree.

He reached the corridor just as she stepped into the airlock. Feeling her turmoil, he followed her, preventing the door his side of the ship closing by the simple expedient of inserting the toe of his boot into it.

From his vantage point, he watched as Tahiri waited for about a minute, then moved her hand to the open airlock control.

"Tahiri," he said, trying out her name for the first time. "Wait."

At his words she turned round, before he stepped into the airlock himself, allowing the door to close behind him.

"What?" she demanded. Jiido could see the tear lines running down her cheeks, and moderated his response. "I wanted to return this." he told her, holding out the hip-flask to her. When she reached out to take it, he grabbed her wrist. "Why?" he asked.

"Because I have nothing left." she replied.

"There's always something." Jiido replied, before pulling her over to him and kissing her, with one arm around her waist. To his slight surprise, he didn't end up in the bulkhead behind him.

~0~

Instantly, Luke sprang into action, using the Force to sprint back up the dune overlooking the camp, heading for his hoverscout, while the wraiths, began packaging his son for an immediate medevac to anchorhead, which was the nearest place on Tatooine with a full medcenter and an emu farm. By the time he drove the craft down the ridge, floating it on minimum power, Ben had been packaged into a folding stretcher, while one of the female wraiths, who he recognised as Jesmin Tainer, was supporting Vestara, helping her along with one arm under her shoulders.

With the effortless grace of a veteran pilot, Luke neatly parked the hoverscout, before dropping the boarding hatch, allowing the stretcher party into the skimmer. Vestara was led up the ramp into the back of the craft, visibly unsteady on her feet.

Regretting it, Luke pulled his pair of binders free from his belt and approached her. Wordlessly, she held out her hands, the wrists still bruised from being lashed to a pole for so long, and he fastened on her handcuffs, but not before placing bandages around her wrists to protect the burns on them from being chaffed by the restraints..

"It's a formality." he said, once both bracelets were secure. She replied with a wry smile, before allowing him to strap her into the seat.

"How long do I have to wear these?" she asked as he did so, rattling the cuffs as an emphasis.

"Technically, you will wear them until you have been tried by the council." Luke replied. "Although I think I might take them off in private, as you are not who you once were."

This time her smile was a confusing mixture of pleasure and surprise.

"The sith girl me and Ben met on Dathomir wouldn't have cared about him the way you do. Think of her as dead. You are Vestara Khai, Jedi, now." Then he bent down and kissed her brow. "We'll leave those on you until we get to the medcenter." Luke told her, before turning away to the comm-console, then activating it and spinning back to the driver's seat, putting the hoverscout into thrust and then flooring it, sending the craft hurtling into the open dunes of the jundland wastes.

_I hope he lets me and Ben make our own decision about us._ Vestara thought, as the harness demonstrated its necessity several times in the first fifty metres.

Meanwhile, Luke was yelling down the hololink.

"This is Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker. I am incoming hot on your facility with one critical and one medium casualty. The critical patient has a severe brain injury, along with damage from a fall. The medium patient has a severe concussion, rope burns, and is a prisoner under the terms of GA law 58123a. My ETA is Thirty, Three Zero, minutes."

"acknowledged." The control came back. "Clearing ambulance bay Coruscant for your arrival, and standing by personnel."

"Copied. And thanks." Luke replied, before forcing the throttle further forwards.

When he arrived, the trauma team were waiting for him, and quickly opened the side of the craft. One of the nurses took charge of Vestara, while four doctors lifted the stretcher carrying Ben's comatose body from the rack it had made the trip in, before jogging inside the building, aiming for the medical scanner room. Vestara was led to a small chamber next to a CCU booth, which two technicians were already connecting up the various leads for. A standard set of binders were used to connect her arms to a chair, before the nurse left, having fastened a small neuroscanner band over Vestara's head.

Ten minutes later, a surge of bodies preceded Ben into the room, before he was loaded onto the bed. Luke was the last into the room, and Vestara meaningfully rattled her cuffs after catching his eye, indicating that she was cuffed to the seat by trying to raise her hands. Luke glanced away, before the cuff holding her to the seat came loose, allowing her a more varied posture.

Ten minutes after the main crowd arrived, the only person left in the room was Luke. Vestara got up and dragged her chair over to the bed, before Luke unfastened her restraints and just hugged her.

~0~

When she felt the sith's lips meet hers, Tahiri was shocked. Then her body relaxed into the kiss, and she drew him closer, before remembering who was kissing her. She broke the kiss, but kept her arms around his shoulders.

"I…" she began, before tailing off.

Then she felt his hand rise under her tunic, and gave up pretending when her feet left the ground.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N The majority of this chapter was written at 38,000 feet. Flying is better with a kindle. This chapter has since been re-ordered, edited, and as a result of the magnitude of the changes, re-posted.**

When she heard the the noise coming through the walls, Jaina was very glad she'd had both compartments sound-proofed, seeing as it sounded suspiciously like Tahiri was making up for lost time. She was also keeping her mind to herself, to avoid getting ideas. If she was honest, she hadn't expected anything other than wary friendship between the two, but guessed that Tahiri had made another suicide attempt, and that Jiido had stopped her from killing herself. Knowing Tahiri, she'd probably made the first move towards taking things further, especially since she had been deprived of anything resembling romantic love or a form of tender, supportive comfort since Anakin had died.

Jaina could still remember finding the girl on Mon Calamari, unconscious from having swallowed two dozen of the anti-depression meds she'd been given. Her skin had been pale and clammy, her breathing extremely shallow, and she'd been totally unresponsive to anything Jaina had done to try and get through to her. Jaina had taken over the other girl's breathing using the force, and that had probably saved her life. Jaina had never managed to gather the nerve to tell her just how close she'd come to death that day,not wating to either scare her, or encourage a repeat of the incident.

Once they finally ran out of energy for anything more serious, Tahiri and Jiido simply sat side by side, both naked, revelling in each other's closeness. Each had an arm around the others shoulders, and they were still kissing ten minutes after Jiido had rolled off for the final time. Tahiri was sore from the frenzy of lovemaking, and her hair resembled a mop. Jiido's shorter, black hair was also messed, and both were covered in a layer of sweat.

She still had no idea why she'd saved his life, except a vague force-urge to do so.

She didn't feel she would ever regret it one bit though, even before the two curled up together and drifted off to sleep in each others arms.

The next morning, Jaina was up earlier than the rest of the crew aboard the _Maiden. _After her usual 'fresher routine, she walked forward into the cockpit, to be greeted by a scarlet light blinking from the blastboat's communications array. At the sight, she tensed, remembering it was only to be used in a family or galactic emergency. Fearing either, she powered up the player, to be greeted by a ten-inch version of her uncle. He looked haggard, with a five-o'clock shadow suggesting something had gone wrong on Tatooine.

"Jaina." He said. "I hope your mission has gone well. Mine and Ben's hasn't gone so well. There were complications, which have left Ben in a coma, and our objective with a severe concussion and multiple minor injuries. She didn't cause them, except indirectly, in case you were wondering. She got grabbed by a tribe of Tuskens and taken off to the ghost oasis. We intervened, and Ben stopped a bullet with his skull. I need your company now. I've already commed Cilghal, but please come as soon as possible."

After digesting the message breifly, Jaina dropped the _Maiden_ out of hyperspace, before punching the coordinates for Tatooine into the navicomputer and setting off for their new destination.

~0~

After two days in a coma, Ben was showing no sign of regaining consciousness. Luke was beginning to wonder if his son would ever wake up, or if he would remain vegetative for the rest of his life. Vestara, when her hands weren't cuffed behind her back or to a chair, had been swinging between crying fits and anger at herself. She hadn't left his bedside once since they arrived.

For Luke, other concerns were beginning to creep in. Despite having left Artoo with very specific instructions not to forward any more mail to his datapad, several letters, sent by CoS Dorvan had arrived, passing on further condolences and memorable encounters with Han and Leia. The Jedi master had also started consuming rather more alcohol than was his norm, often consuming several glasses of the local pallie brew every day, along with two or three cans of something locally made and roughly along the lines of gizer.

The only caller who would be put through to his comlink directly was master Clighal, who Luke had called as soon as his son arrived at the hospital. She had lifted in her shuttle half an hour later, carrying several prototypes of healing technology she had developed, along with her own skills in force healing. Her ETA two days prior had been five days, which meant that Luke's more rudimentary healing trance was all Ben had for another three or so days. Jaina, he estimated, was about another day away, and he knew he would welcome the company.

Vestara had been led away several times, securely cuffed, for various scans and bacta treatments. The ropes burns on her wrists were completely healed, as was her lingering concussion. Luke was keeping an eye on her, in case her self-recrimination broke into suicidal behaviour.

There was also a more nagging memory in Luke's mind. Since he left his homeworld, he had never returned to the site which had turned him, within days, into a war-hero and a mass-murderer. The realisation of what he had done to the death star had been long delayed, only striking him just before Ben joined the GAG. His son had asked him a question he had never asked himself. "Dad, how many people did you kill when you were fighting the empire?" Luke had started to reply "They were all imperials," then stopped, realising he hadn't ever truly thought about it. He couldn't put a number to it either. But he suspected that the real answer was: "Too kriffing many."

He knew, though, that it was his duty to return.

Finally, he tore himself away from his son's bedside, collecting Vestara on the way past, and as gently as possible placing her in handcuffs, then went out to the main parking area, where he had left his hoverscout.

Casting back to his youth, Luke remembered, fuzzily, the location of a florist in anchorhead, from which he had once brought his very first girlfriend flowers, by tatooine standards.

When he pulled up outside, he left Vestara in her seat, staring vaguely through the viewport, then went inside. He was recognised.

"Luke," the woman behind the counter greeted him."Good to see you back in town."

It took him a second to remember the woman's name. He remembered her being about forty when he left, but then he remembered. "Amee," he greeted her, remembering the slightly knowing way she had watched him as a child when he was growing up, as if remembering another. "I need four of your funeral wreaths."

she replied. "I'm sorry about your sister and her husband."

"The wreaths aren't for them this time. They're an old responsibility I neglected."

"Ah." She replied, a slight cackle in her voice. "Your grandmother, her husband, and your aunt and uncle?"

"Yes." Luke replied, wondering how she knew about two of those.

"Very well, Master Skywalker." She handed him the four wreaths, which were constructed from a wire core, wrapped in pallie blossoms and hubba blooms, along with some flowers from a bristle-melon. "If you want any more, just call me. A darklighter freighter flies from here most days."

"Thanks." He replied, meaning it.

"Would you like something for the girl to lay as well?"

"Who?"

"That girl in your vehicle."

"No thanks. She isn't a relative yet."

"Bit young for you, isn't she?"

"She's my son's girlfriend." Luke replied, blushing slightly at the implication.

The old woman cackled, then Luke stalked out of the shop, trying to contain a small smile at the well-remembered, if crude, humour.

In the hoverscout, Vestara had just been sitting there, wondering about the excursion's motivation. Seeing Luke carrying an armful of wreaths, she began to feel hopeful he wasn't going to dump her in the desert.

"Master Skywalker." She greeted him. "Could I have my hands back?"

The question wasn't unexpected, and Luke simply pressed the release pad of the binders, causing her to colour slightly with embarrassment . "I see you didn't check them."

"I didn't expect such trust." She replied. "I am a sith, after all."

"No, Vestara. You are a Jedi now. Remember that."

Then he kissed her, once, on the cheek, before pushing the hoverscout into gear and hurtling off for the darklighter farm.

~0~

~0~

When he drew to a halt three quarters of an hour later, Luke saw the well remembered sight of the farm he'd grown up on. His eyes naturally found the berm he'd used as a vantage point for watching the twin suns dip below the horizon, and spotted the wall he'd set up cans on for target practice. He also saw the four markers two of which he'd placed with his own hands forty-four years earlier, before going to war.

Glancing into the desert, Luke spotted a large rock, before floating it over without any effort. Placing the rock at the end of the row, he drew his saber, before saluting the setting sun with the weapon, then slicing a clean face into the rock. Finally, he placed a unusual second crystal over the emitter, then re-activated the blade, which was now just a centimetre long. Holding the hilt like it was a pen, Luke carved a message into the rock.

'In memory of Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi

Mentor to Luke Skywalker, and one of the last Jedi knights of old.

May the force force be with him, always."

Then he saluted the boulder, before placing his wreaths. One for Shmi Skywalker, one for Owen Lars, and one for Beru Lars. The final wreath was rested against his memorial for his mentor. Finally, with the suns dipping below the horizon, he saluted the graves a final time, before turning and walking back to the hoverscout, where vestara was sitting, doing her best to meditate. Even at the distance he was from her, he could tell she wasn't able to truly focus. As he got closer, he noticed the tracks of tears running down her face.

"I don't want him to die." She said. "It's all I can ever think about. Him lying there, slowly drifting away. I never got the chance to tell him I'm sorry."

"You'll get it, Vestara. In a short time, I hope you'll be Vestara Khai Skywalker."

"Thanks." She said, smiling, before strapping herself in, fumbling the catches slightly, before he put the hoverscout into drive and headed off to anchorhead.


End file.
